Abstract
How do we decide to use tools? Is the decision grounded on the idea of affordances proposed by Gibson (1977,1979) and elegantly followed by others (e.g., Tucker & Ellis, 1998)? One major focus of affordances is based on the idea that the handle of an object will ultimately play a key role on the effector used (e.g., left or right hand) and how to pick it up. However, what if the area of the tool that makes contact with the object upon which it acts (e.g., flat surface of the hammer) plays a critical role as well? We tested if the handle or the contact area of the tools ultimately affect the decision of the observer in a series of studies, in which different tools [1 designed for the action such as driving a nail (e.g., hammer), 1 with similar graspability (e.g., wrench), 1 with similar functionality (e.g., rock), and 1 nonsense tool (e.g., comb)] were presented. In the first study, we did not constrain the amount of time the participants had to decide on which tool to select and use. In this condition participants selected the tool designed for the action first (88%), and to use the tool with similar functionality second (46%). However, once we constrained participants to choose as quickly as possible, there tended to be an even split between tools that looked similar (50% split) when chosen first. Another interest was that the actions performed were chosen by the participants, not instructed; however most participants chose to perform very similar actions regardless of tool selected. This leads us to the next question: What is driving this decision making? The tool or the object?
